Before These Tides, A History of the Dragon Rider (part three)

She had wanted to sleep forever, had planned to sleep forever, but who can sleep with that kind of racket? Why did the guards not put a stop to it? And then she remembered...there were no guards. She was the last Kaldorei alive, at least on this side of the veil...almost the last creature alive, although a handful of the fae still attended her as personal protectors and companions. Now, without their great hometree for a safe haven, each morning she would select a secluded portion of the forest in which to take her rest, yet never would it be far from the Mother's waters.

It was those waters she heard now, with the over-sensitive ear of the elf of her kind, her ears pointed and delicate, yet with the ability to hear even the smallest of sounds, lowest of decibles. Water in severe turbulence sounds like nothing else, yet there was another clue that reached her ears, a sound she had not heard in years, but a sound that heard once, could never be identified as anything but: the screams of a dragon. Upon hearing the commotion, she sat up, fully aware and awake, but hardly believing. Perhaps she had dreamed it, a daymare of gigantic proportions based upon the tragedies of her past. This could not be real.
Could it?

The next instant found her catapulting out into the twilight of daybreak, leaving the sanctity of her hidden thicket, crossing an open field and sliding down the rocky faces of cliffs that descended to the sea below, singing as she went to call forth a pod of dolphins who crested at the water's edge in time to catch her and bear her out to sea....toward the sounds that had reached her, the sounds of some tremendous thrashing....someone...or most likely some thing of immense proportions.... fighting against the rolling waves....most likely insensible and frantic enough to be drowning.

As the dophins drew near, she could hardly believe the sight coming into her view. She was sure that only Ysera herself controlled the skies, even here, for nowhere along their route into these forests had there been any evidence to the contrary. Yet now, as the dophins slowly circled around the great swirling churning of sea, bringing her so close, there could be no mistake....caught within a rouge whirlpool,

and struggling for its very life....was a dragon...and not just any dragon, a golden dragon, rarest of the rare, most powerful of the powerful.

If she could do the creature this favor of freeing it, handing it its very life, she would garner undying gratitude from it forever and a day, or so said the legend. She would yet again become a dragon-rider and a formidable foe for Ysera, the great green flying she-monster that held Malfurion, and now Iniev, captive within the Emerald Dream. She held her breath, thinking about what a scene that would be, thinking about the possibilities of freeing Mal from the Dream so that he could escape Ysera's clutches, so that he could come back to her. And Iniev, her beautiful Blade, would come with him. It was a dream she dared not permit herself to hold as possible....until this very moment.

But first....she had to devise a way for this Golden One to escape...and not only that....she, Tyrannde, had to become.....its Savior.